Certain operations of computers may be controlled by computer scripts that are interpreted by scripting engines. The computer scripts may be written in a form that closely resembles a natural human language. The operations available through scripting may be at a high level, thus permitting complex operations of the computer to be expressed in a compact form.
The preparation of scripts can be relatively easy to do because of the close resemblance to natural human language. However, the expression in an easily read form of operations at a high level makes it easy for a recipient of the script to view the script, understand its operation and potentially modify the script.
It may be desirable at times to include operations in a computer script that the provider would prefer not to reveal to the recipient. This may be accomplished by encrypting a portion of the script so that it is no longer in a plain text, readable form. This may have the drawback of requiring a decryption process to run on the recipient computer that significantly slows down the processing of the script. As an alternative, the computer script may be obfuscated which obscures the readability of the script in a manner that may require little or no additional processing by the scripting engine to interpret the obfuscated script. It will be appreciated that an encrypted script or an obfuscated script can be restored to a readable form with varying amounts of effort on the part of a recipient.